A Florence Night

So I refuse to tell you all about Prague until I can put photos of St. Vitus up with the words. As a result, I will now be telling you about one of my evenings in Florence. We went out to a little cafe down on Via del Corso that sells HUGE calzones (we girls have to split them in order to not explode!) for a really good price. It wasn’t as busy as the last time we were there so we actually got to sit down and enjoy our meal slowly. As we’re about to finish up, one of the gentlemen who worked there passed a plate of pastries to us, hot from the oven! Mine had chocolate in the middle! If this wasn’t enough, the white haired smiling patriarch of the cafe then set down 5 small glasses of wine, motioning for us to take them. All of this except for our calzones were on the house! We couldn’t believe our good fortune!

Moving slowly out of the cafe (stuffed as we were) we walked down to the Arno and wandered across the Ponte Vecchio. We were admiring how the sunset was turning the clouds and the water a gentle pink as the buildings around the Arno got more and more golden in the light when all of the sudden, the sound of opera comes bursting out of no where! Really it was stunning, like a slap to the face. We turned around and looked for the origin of the sound. Finally we realized it was coming from this woman with short curly hair who wass wearing huge sunglasses, a blue rainjacket and pink Crocs. She was an incredible opera singer! It just shows that you can’t judge by appearances! We stood there as the sunset and listened with the captivated crowd to her notes as they flowed toward the sky.

Thanks Megan! You brought back great memories of when Bob and I were there 38 years ago! We watched many sunsets from the Ponte Vecchio. No singers though-darn! One time we thought we saw a dog swimming in the water-turned out to be a rat (big rat)! Ick, Ick, Ick! Love reading your blog-keep it up please! Love, Mary